Kim Davis Gets Unprecedented Treatment by a Judge

No one else who defied a court order to provide licenses has gone to jail; only Kim Davis.

The case for Kim Davis is pretty simple. She ran for office in good faith believing she could and would perform the duties of the office. The Supreme Court then claimed to change those duties (see more on this claim below) and tried to force Christian county clerks to sign off on lies—that there is such a thing as same sex marriage. They might as well have ordered them to sign an agreement that 2 + 2 = 5.

Kim Davis did not believe she could be required to sign a lie and that it was also a violation of her First-Amendment-acknowledged rights to attempt to coerce her to do so. Nor did she believe she was obligated to resign from the office to which she was duly elected. In deference to the public cries for so-called “marriage equality” she stopped signing all marriage licenses. Now she is jailed for contempt of court. She basically will be imprisoned until she agrees to sign off on lies.

There are ways to deal with officers who neglect their duties or otherwise become so odious that they are no longer fit for office. But instead of using impeachment or voter recall, the judge just gave her an order and then jailed her for disobedience. Since he had no authority to order her to sign a document she believes to be a lie and a blasphemous superstition, she is not guilty of contempt of court and her current stay in jail is nothing but a simple abduction.

It is also a capricious inequality. Rachel Alexander points this out at Townhall.com:

Contrast this with Cathy Lanier, chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia, refusing to issue concealed weapons permits to people unless they can arbitrarily show a “good reason,” nothing required by law. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction in May stopping her from denying the permits, although notably he did not send Lanier to jail for contempt.

Similarly, county sheriffs in California had been denying concealed weapons permits to applicants who failed to show a need beyond self-defense. Last November, the Ninth Circuit ruled that the sheriffs were violating the law. None of those sheriffs were sent to jail, despite the fact that people around the country have died unable to obtain a permit to carry concealed.

Or contrast it with the irony of San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom ordering clerks to issue same-sex marriage licenses in 2004, contrary to state law. The California Attorney General sued him and the California Supreme Court ultimately put an end to the practice, but Newsom was never sent to jail.

Newsom also violated federal law by making San Francisco a sanctuary city in 2007, contrary to existing federal law, but nothing happened to him.

Finally, about the Supreme Court: We have a Federal legislature. It has two houses. Passing laws requires a majority in both houses and then it can be vetoed by the President. Only a supermajority can override a Presidential veto. The smaller of these houses, the Senate, has a hundred members. The larger body has 435 (limited by legislation, not due to a Constitutional limit). So, on its face, passing a new law requires 270 elected officers who often face re-election—218 Representatives, 51 Senators, and the President. That is the system that the framers of the Constitution gave us.

But, we are supposed to believe that the Constitution, with all those elaborate protections to make it difficult to impose new laws, allows anyone to bypass that entire process. Instead, any time new laws are proposed in the form of a lawsuit, 5 non-elected, life-time officers can not only impose a new law on the nation, but cancel all work of the fifty state legislators.